No Harm

ONE

ASHES FELL LIKE TEARS on the dull gray coffin.

Kate turned her head away from a hot blast of Santa Ana wind and saw the TV cameraman on the knoll behind her wipe his eyes. She knew that his tears, like those shed by the crowd standing around Mother’s open grave, came from brush fire debris in the air, not from grief. But it would look impressive on the six o’clock news, so many mourning the passing of Margaret Byrd.

Kate wiped her own eyes, and wished for privacy for the grief that raged and burned inside her like the brush fires devastating the hills above Santa Angelica. Looking around at the few familiar faces, she found some consolation in the knowledge that Mother would have liked this. It was a big crowd for a funeral.

Everyone seemed hot and miserable, except for the priest, who was in his element as he delivered his endless eulogy. It would be a long time before he drew a crowd this large again; murder along Santa Angelica’s Gold Coast was a rare occurrence.

Wind stirred ashes into little flurries around Kate’s trim legs, then dropped them into the cool stillness of the open grave. Poor Mother, Kate shuddered. All her plots and plans and wild machinations ended here, with the ashes in that hole.

Carl’s big hand circled her arm, the scars on his knuckles standing out against the tanned skin. The scars looked fresh. The first time she remembered seeing them was in the lawyer’s office when he signed their divorce decree. They turned white as his grip tightened around Kate’s arm. Can we goose up the priest?

What shall I do, faint? Kate asked.

If you don’t, your Uncle Dolph will. Carl’s voice was a soft rasp close to her ear. God, he looks like chalk. He has to get out of this putrid air, pronto, or you’ll be digging him a hole right here next to your mother’s. And if that brush fire jumps the freeway and sets off the ridge above us I don’t think we’ll have time to get all these people into their cars and out of here. It can’t be more than a mile away now.

Then go, if you want. She pulled her arm away.

Carl shrugged. I can wait if your uncle can.

Another hot blast of wind came over the crest of the hill, carrying with it the rank odor of the fire. Kate bowed her head against the wind, dark hair falling like a shield around her face. Beside her, Uncle Dolph seemed hopelessly exposed to the relentless wind as it flapped the vents of his lightweight suit and whipped up tendrils of his sparse white hair. Kate moved closer to him, making herself a windbreak for him. You okay, Dolphy? she whispered.

Don’t worry about me, he said, but he leaned into her, hunkering down out of the wind.

Runnels of perspiration tickled down between Kate’s shoulder blades. Kate’s maid, Esperanza, had insisted she wear this black linen suit, but it was stifling. At least she had gotten out of the house without pantyhose. She unstuck her black pumps from the little divots they had made in the wet grass and tried to find a more comfortable position.

Though thoroughly miserable, Kate would tolerate the heat and soot and the droning of the priest out of love for her mother and respect for her mother’s sense of propriety. But why didn’t all these other people, strangers for the most part, go home? She knew there weren’t this many people in Santa Angelica still on speaking terms with Mother, not since the press started covering her case against Uncle Miles, trying to have him put back in the institution. Maybe, like Carl, they came to be sure she was gone. Or maybe the brutality of the murder drew them, like dry brush into a fire.

… and help us to comfort the family of our dear Margaret. The young priest seemed oblivious to the discomfort of the assembled crowd. … her cherished daughter, Kate. Her beloved brothers-in-law, Miles and Dolph. Dolph’s loving wife, Mina. The priest drew a deeper breath than Kate could have managed. And in memory of her dear husband, Cornell, who lies here beside her for all eternity.

Kate watched the color drain from Uncle Dolph’s face, as if a shade were drawn down from his balding crown to his chin. Proprieties or not, she had to get Dolph away. She caught him as his legs buckled, supporting his weight against her. She nudged Carl. Let’s go.

Right. Carl hoisted Dolph up in his arms like a sleepy child and carried him away.

The priest, still talking, scarcely glanced up. How could a priest who had never met Mother find so much to say about her?

Kate made a perfunctory sign of the cross and turned to follow Carl. As she walked across the uneven grass, she avoided the headstones and sunken ground that marked old graves. Thinking of the coffins beneath her, collapsed under the weight of earth and time, and her mother’s coffin slowly descending into its hole behind her, she hurried to catch up to Dolph and Carl.

Then she remembered the yellow roses in her hand. She had picked them for her father, just as a token to show she still had some memory of him. But his headstone was buried under the earth dug out to make Mother’s grave. It would be too awkward now to turn back, to put these rapidly wilting buds among the flowers heaped by Mother’s bier.

The thorns pricked her fingers. Quickly, she knelt, her slim back straight, and dropped the flowers on the closest marker. The name on the headstone wasn’t familiar.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the priest was giving his benediction. The idea of Mother being so involved with dirt caught Kate as ludicrous, funny even. The alternative, cremation, was unthinkable in this weather. Kate wished her mother had left funeral instructions; she was usually more thorough. But of course, under normal circumstances, Mother would never have allowed her own death. Kate stood up and brushed the wet grass from her knees.

Carl, with his long strides, had already reached Dolph’s big black Mercedes. The driver sent by the mortuary took off his hat and helped him put Dolph in the front seat.

Kate watched them, the smoky haze like a curtain in front of her. Seen there in blurred outline, Dolph looked so much like her father, or what he would have been like if he had lived past thirty. It was at the same time reassuring and a little spooky. She touched the tiny lines under her eyes and thought about how she looked more like them all the time. She had the slender, straight body typical of the Byrd family, saved from austerity in her case by a promising roundness at hips and breast. The angularity of her face was softened by the great gray eyes, thickly lashed in black; a legacy from her father.

Now, was that nice? Aunt Mina caught Kate’s arm in a white-gloved hand. Ashes, like a parody of snow in the heat, settled on her white hair and lined face. I suppose you’ll burn in hell for walking out on the priest. I thought that man would never shut up. Who is he, anyway? He isn’t Margaret’s regular priest, the one who wheezes.

The diocese sent him, Kate said, falling in step with Dolph’s wife. Father O’Banyon has asthma. He couldn’t come out in air like this.

"At least he would have kept it short."

Big crowd, huh? I don’t recognize half the people here. Who are they?

Vultures. Mina flared her fine nostrils. Murder brings them out. Look there. She nodded toward the car where a big-bellied man, panting heavily from the exertion, was making a show of helping Carl. Sy Ratcher. He’s gushing over Carl today. Next week he’ll call you and remind you of our old family connections and offer to help you get your real estate through probate.

There won’t be a probate. The house is mine. According to Grandpa’s will it simply reverted to me when Mother died.

I’m sure Sy knows that. But maybe you’ll want to sell.

Maybe. Kate watched Carl clap Sy on the back, a gesture of superiority. But I’d never have Sy help me.

Mina leaned closer to Kate. Is Carl staying over again tonight?

Yes. Kate smiled. His mother is coming, too.

Young people! Mina’s lavender eyes, the last relic of once astonishing good looks, flashed like opals in the eerie orange light. A long time ago I got used to the idea that people might sleep together, hell, even live together, before marriage. But it will take me a while to understand people who sleep together once the marriage is over.

Kate laughed. I said he was staying over. I didn’t say we were sleeping together.

Now that, Mina said, I don’t understand at all.

Me either. Frankly, sex was the best thing we had going.

So why does he invite his mother along? For a chaperon? Mina didn’t wait for an answer. She hurried Kate toward the car where Carl stood, his square jaw clenched with impatience. Pausing by the open car door, Mina turned and sniffed at the dull orange sky. Smells, she said.

And spreads. Carl waved for Kate and Mina to hurry into the car. Meaning no disrespect for the occasion, ladies, but let’s get moving. Dolph needs a drink and I need to piss.

I’ll have one of each, Mina said, sliding across the back seat to make room for Kate and Carl.

Wait, Kate stopped. Where’s Reece?

I asked him to stay behind, Mina said, to shake hands and wipe noses in our absence.

Then let’s go. Kate sat on the edge of the seat, leaning forward close to Dolph in the front. She watched Sy Ratcher dissolve into the smoky horizon as the car drove away. Dolph turned to her. He was sitting straight and there was reassuring color in his cheeks again. She bent closer to him. Dolphy, are you surviving?

Oh Kate, my Kate, my pretty Kate, he intoned in a bluff, wavery tenor, trying to seem strong, she thought. He punctuated the end of his ditty by kissing her cheek. What did you think when you saw your old uncle bundled off like a baby? I haven’t been carried like that for half a century.

Or more, Mina added with typical dryness.

Some help we’ve been to you, Dolph said. You’ve been through hell the last few days, baby. I would give anything if we could have spared you some of it. It sickens me to think of you having to see your own mother on a slab in the county morgue. He widened his pale eyes to keep the tears from spilling down his cheeks.

Dolph, please, Mina reproved. She wrapped a thin arm around Kate’s shoulders and drew her back. It was an awful, awful thing that happened to Margaret, but it’s time to put it aside and get on with our lives. We’re still just one big happy family, you and me and Dolph and Miles, all living so close together. Things might seem bleak right now because you’re sad, but everything is going to be fine.

Thank you, Pollyanna, Dolph said.

Kate settled back, resting against Carl’s hard shoulder. It surprised her a little how good it felt to be close to him, in spite of the bitterness that lingered after the divorce. But then, tragedy had always brought them closer. He’d come to help her with the legal mumbo-jumbo of death one afternoon, and when it got late she’d offered him the guest room. Three days later, he was still there, more a part of the family than ever. Yesterday, after years of talk, Dolph had finally persuaded Carl to leave the district attorney’s office and join the Byrd family law firm. The marriage was over, but the partnership begun. The arrangement made a strange and sexless ménage à trois.

Damn! Dolph spat, startling Kate. If the police believe it was just an ordinary mugging, why can’t they find the punk?

Shush, now. Mina thumped him on the shoulder. That talk won’t help anything.

Kate closed her eyes, not listening to them, and took a deep breath of the cool, stale car air. If the police were really looking for a street criminal, she thought, why had they spent so much time questioning her? Like ants in a heat wave, they were everywhere; in the house, around the grounds, swarming on the beach, and worst of all, handling Mother’s private things. Kate wanted the person found, but the process was so painful, keeping alive the first moments of terror and anger she’d felt after she’d identified the body.

Again she saw Mother’s crisp white hair caked with dark blood, and her sweet, smooth face, now locked away forever in the gray coffin, ruthlessly bashed to shapelessness. The police thought the mugger was probably a young, drug-starved punk who took Mother’s purse and her life to get himself through another day. It made so little sense when so many people were really mad at her.

The driver swung the heavy car onto Ocean Boulevard and Carl lowered a window and let in the comparatively fresh sea air.

Leaning across Carl’s chest, Kate looked back at the blaze-colored sky. She had embroidered a sampler for her grandfather when she was little, Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. It was a peace offering when she and Mother moved back into Grandpa’s big house after Kate’s father died. Mother had framed the little scrap of linen and presented it to Grandpa Archie and he had patted Kate on the head and tucked the thing in a desk drawer. Just for an instant she could see it again, feel the uneven sailboats stitched along the border. For no good reason, she wondered what had happened to it.

The driver took the curve around Angelica Point too fast and Kate braced herself against the seat. As the car straightened out, she shielded her eyes against the sun to catch a glimpse of the house standing at the highest point of the ocean bluff. It was the centerpiece of three massive, white washed adobe California-Moorish houses planted by her grandfather during the thirties, when bootleggers still ferried customers from the beach to floating casinos beyond the three-mile limit. With the sun behind them, they looked to her like a giant mother bird in her aerie, flanked by two huge chicks grown too heavy to fly from the nest.

The houses were grand and elegant, built before property taxes and coastline conservation laws made such places prohibitively expensive. Outside the iron front gate, painted white to hide its heaviness and function, was the usual variety of beach-front businesses: a pizza parlor with billiard tables, an ice cream store, and a kiosk renting roller skates. They were a homely contrast to the estate behind the gate.

Dolph reached in front of the driver to push the electronic gate opener. Silently, ponderously, the gates parted, revealing the courtyard like an oasis in a blacktop desert. Skaters and sandy children dripping ice cream stopped to peer in, stealing glances of a secret garden.

The driver sounded the horn as a warning to sidewalk traffic before driving across. The hot pungency of the densely planted hawthorne and eucalyptus, a barrier to outside noise and vision, cut through the smell of brush fire and signaled the transition between the world outside and life inside the compound. The buffer zone, Kate thought, or maybe the no-man’s land. She felt tension slide up her back as the driver parked in the brick courtyard that served as the common drive for the three houses.

When the law says a man’s home is his castle, this is what they’re talking about, Carl said, eyes riveted on the center house, like a child selecting dessert from a pastry cart.

"This is your house now, Kate," Mina said pointedly.

Yes. Kate looked at it past Carl’s profile. A big house to live in alone.

Look, Carl, Dolph said, the troops are storming the bastions.

Mina sat up abruptly. What are you talking about?

Police, he said, pointing toward the beach stairway. They’re over the beachhead and up to the gates.

TWO

MINA STRAINED FORWARD, nose pressed against the car window. How do you know they’re police?

I can tell by the cut of them, Dolph said. All the putzing around they do, they can’t keep a press in their suits.

What were they doing down on the beach? Kate leaned forward to see the two men at the top of the beach stairs. They stopped to dump hot sand from their shoes and cuffs, looking like passing tourists who were seduced into a quick toe-dip in the surf. The taller man waved, straightened his jacket and tie, then loped easily across the grassy bluff toward the car. Kate liked the looks of him, relaxed somehow, without the bulldog eagerness of the police investigators she had met since her mother’s death.

Wait here. Carl opened the car door. I’ll see what’s up. I know this guy.

Hands in pockets, Carl walked to the edge of the courtyard, perched one foot on the curb and waited for the other man to come to him. Kate knew the ploy well, part of the jockeying for dominance Carl used so skillfully in court. Usually, confronted by Carl’s imposing size, other men shrunk into their jackets, slacked back a pace. But this one didn’t. He extended his hand to Carl, letting Carl reach for it. It looked like an even match.

Nice looking fellow, Mina said in her stage whisper, if a little darkish.

Darkish? Dolph laughed. That’s somewhat better, I suppose, than black as the ace of spades?

Mina nudged him. You know what I mean.

Only too well, my love. Only too well.

Carl walked the policeman over to the car, his arm vaguely behind the man as if he were an usher at a formal gathering. The man was tall, maybe a little taller even than Carl, but narrower, not as solid. He looked Latino, and walked with an easy, unhurried sort of grace, forcing Carl to trim his normal full-speed-ahead pace. Kate smiled at the annoyance on Carl’s face.

Kate, Carl said, this is Detective Lieutenant Roger Tejeda from the Santa Angelica police.

Lieutenant? She offered her hand, smiling to cover the prickly feeling of dread growing inside. What’s happened? We haven’t rated anyone ranked higher than sergeant yet.

Maybe you just got lucky. He gave her hand a little squeeze before he released it. A small gesture, she found it reassuring, until he put a sudden brake on the smile that started to light his face. He smoothed his tie, leaving a faint dark tracing on the red silk. We found something down on the beach we hope you can identify.

She held her breath, remembering the last time the police had politely asked her to come and identify something; it had been her mother, laid out on a cold slab in the county morgue. Her throat seemed to clench shut. She tried to clear it, to break through the tight knot. Is it a body?

There was a collective gasp around her.

Oh, God, no. Tejeda touched her arm, seemed embarrassed. It’s just a handbag.

Ah, she breathed, feeling a little chagrined by her reaction. It’s Mother’s?

Think so, he nodded. Maintenance people found it when they cleaned the beach this morning.

Our beach? She stepped away from the car to look down toward the beach, straining as if she might still be able to see some impression on the sand, find some reality there. Where?

Just down there. He pointed in the direction of the beach stairs.

Carl edged between them. If Kate needs to see the purse now, Lieutenant, why don’t you bring it up to the house. We’ll all get something cool to drink.

Thanks just the same, Tejeda said. This is only a formality. If the rest of you folks will excuse us, my partner will bring the bag over for Mrs. Teague. Save you a trip downtown. I know the timing is bad, but I thought you’d rather take a look at this thing now and be done with it.

Carl, darling. Mina took him by the elbow and gently turned him. Would you please help Dolphy up to the house? This heat is just more than he can bear.

Kate sensed Carl’s hesitation, as he looked first at Dolph, then at Tejeda. Then he shrugged, dismissing the importance of the dilemma. He gave Kate a possessive kiss on the cheek. Yell if you need me. We’ll be at the house, waiting.

Kate recognized how skillfully Mina had gotten rid of Carl by giving him a graceful way out. Maybe Carl knew it, too. He solicitously held both Dolph and Mina by the arm so that they formed a little cluster as they walked to the shady portico of Kate’s house and stopped there by the big front door, watching Kate and the lieutenant in the same way that gulls hover over crumbs on the